LAGOS: Local wheat production is rising and Nigeria will achieve the 68 per cent local production target by year end.
Making the disclosure in an interview with The Tide source recently, the Executive Director, Lake Chad Research Institute, Dr Gbenga Olabanji stated that wheat production in the Northern part of the country would have increased the current output from 45 to 60 per cent.
He added that the 68 per cent output target set by the Federal Government would be achieved by the end of 2015, even as he said this would help the country save N431 billion from its wheat import bill.
“Farmers have adopted the improved variety and we have released two new varieties in December, Reyna 28 and Norma Boulaug with average yield of 5.5 to 6.0 tonnes per hectare.
“Presently, we can say we have attained about 45 per cent but if we are to add all the products in all the Northern producing states, we will have close to 60 per cent, so 68 per cent is still very much achievable” he said.
Olabanji added that Lake Chad had released an improved variety of seeds that could produce up to five to six tones per hectare of wheat while the area of production had also been increased to about 150,00 hectares.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, had in 2013 said Nigeria would meet 68 per cent wheat needs by 2015.
In two years, if we accelerate investment, we should be able to produce 2.2 million metric tonnes of wheat.
“This would meet 68 per cent of our domestic wheat needs and save Nigeria N431 billion in wheat imports annually”, the minister had said.
The Assistant to the Minister on Media and Strategy, Dr Olukayode Oyeleye however said Nigeria had over the years witnessed some setbacks in local production of the commodity due to lack of planting materials, government policy change and lack of incentives to stakeholders.
“The huge increase in consumption, complied with low productivity resulted in importation to fill the gap between demand and supply.
“Local consumption in the country has reached 4.0 million tones while production stood at 100,000 tons in 2012.
“To reverse the trend where more than N600 billion in foreign exchange is spent on importation, the wheat value chain was put in place”, he said.
He added that the mandate of the value chain was to increase productivity of wheat from 2.0 tonnes per hectare in 2-013 to between 5.5 and 6.0 tonnes by 2017.
He said the national production from the current 100,000 tonnes to 1.5 million tonnes by 2017 reduced wheat importation by about 50 per cent.
Oyedeye explained that the upcoming planting season between November and December would see up to 60,000 farmers receiving 50 kilogrammes bag of wheat seed each at 10 per cent susbsidy and two 50 kg bags of NPK fertilizer at 50 per cent subsidy.
